This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It's the same old, same old every January.
As soon as we pack up the holiday decorations, I feel like growing me some fur and sleeping in a cave until the end of March. Except not in a cold cave. I want a warm cave. One with a TV in the corner, so when I wake up once a week to forage for acorns and berries (and possibly red velvet cupcakes), I can check to see how the Jazz are doing.
Sadly, the fur/cave thing hasn't worked out for me yet, so instead I've been doing what I usually do in the winter, which is to say "blech" a lot and move through the day in slow motion. Also, I feel irritated with my husband, because don't you know he just loves winter. Winter energizes him. Dude bounces around from project to project like Tigger because life is just so much fun! fun! fun! Meanwhile I sit in the corner, stuffing my face with carbs and glaring at him. Balefully.
Blech. Happy people are such a drag.
OK. I'd been carrying on this way for a few weeks until suddenly I had this epiphany. I'm getting older, and one day I'm gonna die. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life hating three months of every year?
Answer: No. I don't. Hating the inevitable (winter in Utah, for example) is stupid.
So lately I've been trying to embrace the season. I get up every morning and say, "Winter, I embrace you, because who doesn't love to put on lots of bulky underwear every day so she won't freeze to death?"
And whenever I get in the car, I say "Winter, I embrace you, because each time my car fishtails on an icy road, I get to laugh — hahahahahahahaha — in the face of danger, which makes me feel so alive."
Also, I'm attempting to open myself up to new life experiences like the one I had the other night. A few weeks ago, a reader (Hi, Diane!) invited me to attend a belly dancing class at the yoga studio on "K" Street near my home in the Avenues. Belly dancing! Now there's a thought! So I said I have a belly, why not use it? Because you know how it is — a belly is a terrible thing to waste.
Anyway, the class starts at 8:40 on Tuesday nights, which is totally late for someone like me. By 8:40 in the winter, honey, I am already in my jammies, waiting for the next episode of "Matlock," and I am not going out again for anything. Not even for acorns and berries.
Do you hear me? Not even for acorns and berries. Or cupcakes.
But. I'd told Diane (during the day when the sun was out and I almost felt like doing something) that I'd be there. So I prepared myself to brave the elements like Sir Edmund Hillary and left my house in the dead of night. I showed up at the Avenues Yoga studio, took off my shoes, wrapped this scarf deal with lots of jingling things on it around my hips, and took a belly dancing lesson.
My verdict? Fun! fun! fun! (Although I'm glad my kids couldn't see me.) (And they're glad, too.)
Meanwhile, January is more than half over.
Not that I'm wishing my life away.
Ann Cannon can be reached at acannon@sltrib.com.